FAMILY FIGHT ENDS IN TRAGEDY

A Salt Lake woman died Saturday after her husband shot her in the face and chest during a three-hour ordeal that began as a family fight and ended when the man shot him-self.

Bea Lyday, 39, 519 N. 1400 West, died about 3 p.m. while undergoing emergency surgery at LDS Hospital, a nursing supervisor said.Jared L. Lyday, 57, same address, suffered a gunshot wound to the head and is "brain dead and on life-support systems" at LDS Hospital, according to Salt Lake police Lt. Mark Zelig.

Police responded to the west Salt Lake address at 1:30 p.m. after receiving a call about a family fight. As officers arrived, a dispatcher reported that a woman was shot through the body and in the head.

Before the shooting occurred, the man apparently "went into a frenzy and attacked" his 15-year-old daughter, the daughter's friend and Bea Lyday with a hammer, Zelig said.

"For some reason he aborted the hammer attack and used the gun," he said.

Trina Betz, a friend of the Lydays' daughter, Honey, said the man "had been hitting me and Honey with a hammer, and when Bea tried to stop him, he pulled out a gun."

Neither of the girls was seriously injured.

A witness said he heard two shots and saw Bea Lyday running out of her house yelling "don't shoot!"

John Sorenson, another witness, said the woman tried to hide underneath a pickup truck parked on the street.

"She ran out of the house and rolled under the truck, and the man just stood there and shot her," he said.

Honey Lyday said she "carried her (mother) up to the neighbor's house and called the police" after a shot was fired near the truck.

The neighbor said Bea Lyday "was choking and had blood on her face" before emergency personnel arrived. She said "(Lyday) was trying to keep her eyes open."A few minutes after the shooting, Jared Lyday left his home and ran north through a residential area. He eventually asked neighbors to give him a ride to Rose Park Golf Course, 1386 N. Redwood Rd., police said.

More than a dozen officers, including two police dog units, surrounded the man about an hour later as he lay in a shallow impression on the west bank of the Jordan River. When police approached the area, Lyday shot himself once in the temple or mouth, Zelig said.

After hearing the gunshot, officers took cover behind trees while the man lay on his stomach with his hand on the gun beneath his chest.

"Officers weren't sure if he had shot at them or at himself," Zelig said. "They didn't know if he was playing possum or what."

A police dog attacked the man and dragged him by his shoulder 8 feet away from the gun, the dog's trainer Mark Nelson said.

"That dog and trainer did a great job - they defused a potentially dangerous situation without using deadly force," Sgt. Don Campbell said.